It was billed as "THE REAL DRIVING SIMULATOR" (as you can clearly see on the image I posted) and boy was it ever. Arguably the most realistic racing game at the time, and the best looking, it also featured a huge number of cars (140, at a time when most games had maybe a couple dozen tops) that could be upgraded and modified, and a wide variety of tracks, with both single player (arcade or career) and two player split screen modes. The career mode had you choose among a variety of races, winning trophies and money (in the form of credits). You also had to earn different racing licenses to unlock some races and cars, with the ultimate goal of winning the Gran Turismo championship.
Admittedly, my experience with this game was very limited, because by the time I got to it, we had also bought...
GRAN TURISMO 2 (PlayStation, 1999)
Following up the best racing game ever was going to be a hard act to follow, but Polyphony Digital pulled it off with this one. Featuring the same realistic driving engine, with some graphical improvements, Gran Turismo 2 also featured an impossibly huge roster of cars, around 650, a massive jump from the first game. While it was still largely the same game, there were more tracks and more modifications. I believe this was the first game to offer used vehicles. My first car was a 1991 Toyota Supra, a bargain car that actually performs surprisingly well for the money and even better once you're able to add in some modifications (upgraded suspension, turbocharger, etc.). Sadly there was a bug in this game that could cause your cars to disappear. It wiped out my entire garage (almost 50 cars) including my beloved Supra (used cars are a one-time deal, so I couldn't replace it), and this is probably the reason why GT2 sold fewer copies than any other game in the series (thought still very nearly 10 million).
Luckily, I am primarily an American car kind of guy, so I replaced my 1998 Chevy Camaro SS and that became my go-to car for a while. My championship car was a 1998 Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4, which scaled well with the upgrades and I liked the stability of the AWD package (though I never won the championship). Another fun car was the 1998 Jaguar XJ220, which went northward of 900 horsepower with the top turbocharger available (good luck steering it, that thing could fly!). Eventually, a new generation of consoles would emerge (natch), so we moved on to...
GRAN TURISMO 3: A-SPEC (PlayStation 2, 2001)
Following up the best racing game ever was going to be a hard act to follow, and I feel that Polyphony Digital dropped the ball with this one. While the best selling game in the series, this is probably due to being bundled with the PS2 console for a time (that is ultimately how I acquired the game AND the console). Perhaps due to being a launch title, it was rushed a bit and felt like it took a step back. The graphics, of course, were fantastic, and the game engine was as realistic as ever, but the stable of cars shrank to a paltry 180 vehicles, and certain features (such as racing modifications, which made your vehicle look like a real racer plastered with sponsorships) were missing.
My first car was another Toyota: a 1985 Sprinter Trueno AE86 GT Apex (basically a sporty Corolla)My go-to car in this game was the 2000 Subaru Impreza WRX, a nice little turbocharged 4-cylinder with AWD. This car was a real money-maker due to the stupid simple race that was added for AWD-vehicles only. It was run on the test track, which was simply a great big oval, and was just a matter of which vehicle was the most powerful. AWD vehicles lack cornering, but the track had very gentle turns, and the stiffest competition was a VW New Beetle that ran about 370 horsepower, which my modified WRX could beat handily
Fortunately greener pastures soon arrived in the form of...
GRAN TURISMO 4 (PlayStation 2, 2005)
This was redemption for the franchise in my opinion. Once again, the graphics were improved, and the game engine was great. The ridiculous stable of cars had returned as well. This game boasted over 700 models, some truly absurd for a racing game (1915 Ford Model T, 1886 Mercedes-Benz Daimler Motor Carriage).
One VERY nice feature: if your memory card had a GT3 game save, you were automatically given the Class B and Class A licenses, and a large sum of cash (I think 100,000. Or perhaps 150,000). This allowed me to bypass the used cars entirely and get myself one of my all-time favorite cars: a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro SS, with some cash left over for modifications (such as a supercharger). I can't even begin to tell you how pumped I was to start the game off with a real muscle car. Of course, more were added to my garage, although my go-to car was actually a 2002 Nissan Skyline GT-R M-Spec Nur (that really rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?), although for muscle races, I usually went with the Camaro.
This game finally had a challenger though, in the form of Forza Motorsport for Xbox (my go-to car was a 1970 Ford Mustang Boss 429). While I loved Forza, and it had some features that GT did not (such as custom decals, or even changing the paint job on your car after you purchased it), Gran Turismo still remains my favorite racing series to this day (perhaps due to the Nostalgia Filter, but oh well).
EDIT: I forgot to mention that in Gran Turismo 3, I found I had some affinity for rally (off-road) racing. I primarily used a Ford Escort Rally Car in this endeavor, as I had previously owned a 1987 Ford Escort GT (which is actually my favorite car I have ever owned, as it is the closest thing I've had to a sports car. I called it the "Mini-Mustang" due to it's resemblance to the Ford Mustangs at the time, and found out later it was nicknamed the Pony due to that very reason). I actually torched a few of my then-girlfriend's college buddies in rally races. Gran Turismo 4 upped the ante as in addition to the usual dirt tracks, the game featured snow tracks. I kept plugging on with my Escort rally car though.
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